How to Start a Local Validator

Testing your program code locally can be a lot more reliable than testing on devnet, and can help you test before trying it out on devnet.

You can setup your local-test-validator by installing the solana tool suite and running

solana-test-validator

Benefits of using local-test-validator include:

• No RPC rate-limits
• No airdrop limits
• Direct onchain program deployment (--bpf-program ...)
• Clone accounts from a public cluster, including programs (--clone ...)
• Configurable transaction history retention (--limit-ledger-size ...)
• Configurable epoch length (--slots-per-epoch ...)
• Jump to an arbitrary slot (--warp-slot ...)